Saturday, April 30, 2016

A few weeks ago I mentioned that I was talking shop with my
friend David, the graphic designer who helped design the cover of ALL CHICKENS
MUST DIE, the latest Benjamin Wade book. I gave him a list of books that helped
me along. The books that I mentioned was one that doesn’t usually show up when
we talk about famous writing books. It’s called The Secrets of the World’s Best–Selling Writer: The Storytelling
Techniques of Erle Stanley Gardner by Francis L and Roberta B Fugate. The
book was published in 1980. It’s the story of how Gardner went from merely a
lawyer to, at the time of his death in 1970, the world’s best-selling writer.
It is a fascinating book. When I first discovered it a few years ago, I checked
it out from the Houston Public Library and read through it very quickly. I took
copious notes. I mean a lot of notes. I ended up reading it a second time and
now, I’m reading it through for a third time. There is little about Gardner’s
personal life; instead, this is a “biography” of how writer practiced, honed
his skills, and ultimately, was successful.

The Erle Stanley Gardner papers are housed at the University
of Texas at Austin at the Harry Ransom Center. When I attended school there, I
never knew it and, let’s be honest, I had never read any of Gardner’s books.
The two Fugates scoured through all of Gardner’s papers and pulled out a
wonderful history — complete with many of Gardner’s own notes — of the steps he
took to become the writer he became. The appendices are wonderful and there are
even a few photographs of Gardner’s own handwritten notebooks complete with
descriptions, timelines, and all the other things he needed to craft his mystery
books. A particularly neat thing is the transcription of a lecture he gave to
the writers of the Perry Mason TV show back in 1959. And when I say
transcription, I’m talking about an 8 to 10 page block quote. He basically
summed up everything you needed to know about how he wrote all his books in
this single transcription.

So how do the writings of Gardner and independent authors
collide?

As independent authors in 2016, we are urged to publish
regularly and frequently. This helps us build up an audience as quick as
possible and, if one can maintain a certain writing production, it will give
our readers a constant flow of our work. There are many different definitions
of “publish regularly and frequently.” I’ve seen estimates that can range from
two books a year to four books a year or more. If you think about it, even a
moderately paced writing schedule of 1000 words a day can yield, more or less,
four books a year that you can then publish. Anything more is gravy (or
flooding the market, depending on your mindset).

The reason I bring up Earl Stanley Gardner when talking
about independent publishing is his publishing schedule. Now, for the purposes
of this discussion, I’m only talking about his novels. He honed his skill as a
pulp writer in the 20s and early 30s, writing short stories, novelettes, and
novellas. I seem to remember one statistic from the book which stated that he
wrote up to 1 million words a year. I know some modern-day writers who can
achieve this feat — James Reasoner being one of them — but the mere fact of
writing a million words a year is incredibly staggering. But with the writing
and publication of Gardner’s first Perry Mason novel, The Case of the Velvet Claws, Gardner turned toward writing more
books and fewer short stories.

Get a load of the statistics. In 1933, he published two
Perry Mason novels. In 1934, he published three. In 1935 and 1936, he published
two each. So that’s nine books and four years. Starting in 1937, things get
more interesting. In 1937, he published three novels, two Perry Mason’s and one
of his Doug Selby, DA, series. In 1938, same thing: two Perry Mason books and
one DA book. Now comes 1939. We get two Perry Mason books, one DA book, and the
debut of the Cool and Lam series. That’s four books in one year! He tops
himself in 1940: two Cool and Lam books, two Perry Mason books, and one DA
book. So, if you do the math, in the first eight years of his novel writing
career, Erle Stanley Gardner published 24 books in three different series.

So yeah, Erle Stanley Gardner pretty much published like an
independent author. The only difference between him and what we do in 2016 is
that he had a traditional publisher. And it was the 1930s, so things were
different. And he was able to devote all his time to writing. And he dictated
everything. Famously, he dictated the first Perry Mason book in three days. He
said it took him a half a day to come up with the plot and 2 1/2 days to
dictate the entire book. Wow. I’m majorly impressed.

And if you want one more little tidbit from the mind of Erle
Stanley Gardner regarding how he thought about his readers and the editors of
the pulp magazines in the 1920s, there is this: “My own approach to the
question is different from that of the critic. I am a writer. I serve the
reading public. The reading public is my master.” And, according to the Fugates,
“After that, he became an outspoken exponent of the idea the publisher of the
magazine was simply acting as a middleman in purveying merchandise — story
supplied by writers — to readers, the ultimate consumers.”

Erle Stanley Gardner. He acted like an independent author
when such a thing rarely existed. Now it does. I wonder how many authors can
replicate his success over the nearly 40 years of his novel-writing career? I
have my own answer. I aim to try.

Friday, April 29, 2016

Sometimes when you get to talking to someone with great insight and stories to tell, you lose track of time and forget you're going to have to transcribe the conversation in an interview format for the readers of Do Some Damage - and that's exactly what happened when I sat down with James Queally, a crime reporter for the L.A. Times, just days after his paper won a Pulitzer for their coverage of the San Bernardino shooting.

James shared some great stories and gave me a lot of his time, so rather than trying to butcher the wonderful thing we created, I've decided to split his interview into two entries. In this entry, we discuss the importance of crime reporting, the tensions during the Ferguson protests, and how small details tell more than one might imagine when reporting on crime.

You’ve been doing
crime reporting for a while now, how many years?
I’ve been on and off for about seven years. I did
breaking crime at night, so like, graveyard shift homicides all across New
Jersey for about two years at the Star Ledger, then I started covering the
Newark Police Department and statewide crime there.

When I came out here the
first year, I was doing… working on this like digital breaking news desk so it
was kind of a diversion. Then, for about the last year I’ve been kind of like a
general assignment crime reporter for the Times, mostly crime around L.A.
County, so that could be anything from an investigative project to getting sent
to South L.A. because a body got found in a refrigerator.

That actually
happened, I’m not that imaginative.

Wow! So, I mean what
I want to know, from your perspective is (and it may seem obvious to you): Why
do you think it’s important to have people like you out there covering crime as
it’s happening?
It’s a variety of different things. It keeps an open dialogue, especially in the past two years with every officer use
of force, pretty much, that happens in the U.S. under scrutiny. It allows the
other side of any argument to come out. It’s the same as the importance of
covering politics, of covering you know, court system. It gets human voices, it
gets dissenting voices into a conversation that would otherwise be dominated by
the press release or the sentencing transcript, or the court
transcripts. I guess court’s a bad example ‘cause that is pretty open dialogue.

But you know, it’s let’s us be there, in the moment getting witnesses, doing as
much of our own investigation as we can. A lot of what drove Ferguson, aside
from social media was simply the “Hands up, don’t shoot” narrative kind of
coming out of witness statements, coming out of Twitter, coming out of the
St. Louis Post Dispatch’s early reporting down there. It kind of, depending on
what side of that argument you’re on, you could say it’s for better or worse,
but it kept it from just being the original police department narrative. And
that’s kind of what I’ve always found, and it also just gives you more avenues
to a more human story.
I’ve found plenty of good features, good other
interesting characters to write about. Moreso when I was in Newark when I was
really plugged into the city, just by going to homicide scenes. You know, you
may go there and it might be what on it’s face looks like a typical murder. Your average police department press release is not terribly
illuminating. It will generally be this is the age, the hometown, gender of the
dead person or people. There are survivors, they are in this condition. They’ll
generally say they don’t have a motive or suspect, or if they do release a
motive it’s because it’s something basic or obvious like a domestic violence
call or a known gang thing. And that’s usually it.

That’s all there is – and at
the end of the day, somebody died. You know, there’s still a story to tell
there. It’s not going to be every murder case, but you need to go down there.
It’s probably your best crack at finding witnesses – obviously at finding
witnesses, but also finding family members who will show up before everyone
kind of just kind of scatters away. It’s a lost opportunity to not
armchair cover. When drowning in Newark, in nearly a
hundred murders per year, there were days I would occasionally not run on the
scene, but more often than not, I tried to get to every one I possibly could.

Do you feel that, in
the time that you’ve been covering these kind of things that people seem to be
more interested in the more human details than maybe they have been in the past
– with things like the Freddie Gray incident in Baltimore and realizing that
there are competing narratives?
Yeah, I mean, people have always been obsessed with crime
and true crime narratives, but I definitely think everyone – you know, you have
a facebook account – everyone is armchair quarterbacking the way police handle
everything, especially use of force these days.

So I think it is more important
than ever to have the other side of the argument –
even if the police are right – it’s just like any conversation you need both
sides. I do think there is more interest in it now, it’s also more
important, I think, just to get factual information to have traction. Because
you know “millenials are evil’, it’s my generation that’s doing this, but they
kind of live and thrive off social media

But you know, Ferguson was both a good and terrible example of this
because while on the one side of things, Twitter definitely made that issue
front and center – I really think that, more than Eric Garner, is what pushed
us into the scrutiny and the climate we’re in now. But like I said, it brought
all that attention the day of, and the week of when the shooting first
happened. But also, when I was down there you could see people yelling and
screaming things that were happening, that just weren’t. They would say the
buildings were on fire that I was standing in front of, or that looters were in
a certain building that they weren’t. You can just say anything. So I think now
more than ever it’s important for those initial accounts to get out there and
to get them from reporters on the ground, people you can trust. Get them online
quicker.

If we’re not physically there in the moment and you’re waiting. It might sound like it’s a police sanitized narrative
– but like I said before, the press releases are so
limited that even while I was down there and I got to Ferguson – I landed about
an hour after the grand jury decision, so things had already gotten bad. I
could see the smoke coming up while I was landing at the airport in St. Louis.
Anyway, there was a press conference about 2 am with the St. Louis County
Police Chief, and he told you everything he could. But I mean, at the end of
the day the official account of hundreds of people obliterating the main road
through a city, he can’t cover everything that happened.

There was one thing I saw that got picked
up by a few media accounts, but not a ton – there was a near catastrophe down
there that I think I was one of the only reporters standing around for.
Things were insane. There was a gas station that had already been looted
earlier in the night and – some of this is just illumantive to the tension,
it’s not really a major story on it’s own – this caris just trying to get out of the street, from
these rioters and peels off into the gas lot to get out of the way. And two
officers arrived there, pull their rifles and advance on them. These were
like sixteen year old kids, just trying to get the hell out of Dodge. That was
like five seconds away from something absolutely mortifying happening. And in a
vacuum, it’s chaos, no one is wrong to some extent. The officers are defending
themselves, these people are trying to get the hell out of Dodge, but it’s
just… you get examples like that, that really highlight the tension, almost
more than any quote, anything a police officer is going to tell you, anything a
city official is going to tell you. THAT image stayed with me and it was
something I kept harkening back to writing about it later. You get those little
pockets of action that you just might not see otherwise.

One of the worst murders I remember covering in Newark.
There was some street dispute, I don’t remember exactly what lead to this. I
think it was 2011. But a thirteen year old kid was murdered by this twenty-four
year old. They were apparently fighting over the same woman. But when we got
down to the scene it was less than an hour after it happened. A reporter
who I was working with on it, found that the
kid’s mother was outside, powerwashing the blood off the street. That’s
kind of always been a hallmark of urban centers, the street Mylar balloons
and candles, its always the one repeat image of homicides there, and she was
cleaning the spot that was eventually going to turn into that. If that’s not
indicative of the hellacious urban violence that happened in that city the
whole time I was covering it, I don’t know what is. I just feel like finding
those pieces can sometimes highlight what’s going on better than any comment.

And obviously, going back to what you said before, yeah what
we’re talking about, especially increased scrutiny of police now – it’s not
just getting the witnesses right there and not letting misinformation get
traction, it’s also you wanna get to people before, you know like anything –
like anybody, like a police officer would, too – you don’t want to talk to them
after they’ve told their story three and four and five times and refined it.
And they’ve talked to TV or have been coached, or they’ve been deposed by a
lawyer. You don’t want to talk to somebody who was there three days
later. You want to talk to them right there, right then, right now. So you’re
gonna get the clean story.
You’ve just got to be there. It’s not a good way to
do business otherwise

Thursday, April 28, 2016

When I was an undergraduate in Louisiana, I read Thomas Pynchon because his books seemed cool and he seemed mysterious. (Years later, when we became good friends, I realized Tom was much weirder than anyone knew. (Yes. We're pals. If you don't believe me, just ask him.)) I enjoyed Gravity's Rainbow and V. quite a bit, especially the parts I didn't understand. I enjoyed Lot 49, which is sort of the Pynchon for people who never read Pynchon.

Later, in graduate school in Kansas, I read Vineland and some of Mason & Dixon. (I think Mason & Dixon was too clever for me.) While in Kansas, I checked out Slow Learner from the library, Pynchon's story collection, stories he'd written in the late 50s and early 60s.

The amazing thing about the book was the introduction, in which Pynchon laid out in horrifying detail what went wrong with each of his stories, all of which were published (Kenyon Review, Saturday Evening Post, Epoch, etc). He writes that he got dialog wrong, characters wrong, motivation wrong. The intro reads as if some sock puppet is attacking him on Amazon. It's heart-breaking and glorious.

This book sticks with me for a couple reasons. One, when I went back to return the book after two weeks and ask whether I could renew it, I was told I hadn't checked it out at all. According to the records, the book was still on the shelf. I held the book in front of the librarian and explained to her that, well, no, the book was indeed checked out. She said that it was still on the shelf. I said that it was not. At the time, I was not as pleasant and charming as I am now, of course. My state of being has taken decades to perfect, as you'd expect. So, it is possible that we each became rather grumpy with each other. I absconded with the book, down the steps and to the sidewalk. I thought I was brave enough to live with stolen property, but I was not. I went back to the library and returned the book directly to the shelf. A few days later, when I went to check the book out again, it was gone. A different librarian said that they had no record of the book, that it did not exist in their card catalog. She was nicer than the other librarian, but no less unhelpful.

Last week I purchased a used copy of the book. (Tom doesn't need the money, believe me. He won a substantial amount a few years back betting on a town council election in Escondido.) I was reminded of Pynchon's writing lessons in the introduction, his explanations of where he went wrong. Many readers hated this book when it came out, calling it "self-indulgent" and worse. Fine.

What I appreciated in the book was that an accomplished author walks the reader through his earlier stories with hindsight. I am thankful for his hindsight and think that, as a writing book, Slow Learner is horribly under-rated.

If you can find it on the cheap, you might want to give it a shot, just for the introduction. Also, your library might have a copy. Or not.

Wednesday, April 27, 2016

First, thanks to Holly for offering this coveted spot. I’m a daily reader of DSD and getting to post here is always a treat.

There are two types of series heroes: those who evolve and those who don’t. Readers seem to prefer those who don’t: Robert B. Parker’s Spenser and Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer jump to mind. The problem with them was the series went on so long the characters became virtual caricatures of themselves, kicking ass and taking names well into their 70s (and 80s for Hammer). This might not have been so jarring had Parker and Spillane left out references to their heroes’ history as time went on, but they seemed to relish in reminding us that Spenser saw action in the Korean War and Hammer served in the OSS. Kind of took me out of the stories after a while.

Not that evolving the hero is safe. Raymond Chandler left Philip Marlowe pretty much alone until he married him off in PLAYBACK which is, without question, the weakest Marlowe book. (Even POODLE SPRINGS is better, and Chandler didn’t write all that much of it. Parker didn’t do a bad job finishing it up, but it’s no competition to Chandler’s best). Dennis Lehane domesticated Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro in MOONLIGHT MILE and it’s by far the outlier of that series. (I always had the feeling Lehane got tired of people bitching about wanting another Kenzie-Gennaro book and wrote MOONLIGHT MILE to shut them up in more ways than one).

The two best examples I have of evolving the hero are current series still relatively young, but that show great promise. Adrian McKinty’s Troubles Trilogy is now five books long and displays no signs of slowing down. Sean Duffy moves through Northern Irish history as lone Catholic on the Protestant police force in an era where that wasn’t much safer than being a Jewish security guard at a Hezbollah convention. The books retain their vigor in large part because of the inevitable effects of the times on Duffy and those around him. John McFetridge is only two books into his Eddie Dougherty series (a third is on the way) but Eddie’s growth is apparent even in A LITTLE MORE FREE as he investigates cases and lives through a tumultuous period of Canadian history.

Stagnant protagonists are nice if I just want to read a series novel at random but reading through the series can get stale. No matter how creative the author gets with the plots, an aura of sameness permeates the book when you know the hero is going to remain essentially unaffected by all the horrible things that have happened to—and been done by—him. I like to see the characters move through time as real people would. That’s the point with fictional characters, right? To make them real.

That’s what I’ve tried to do with Nick Forte. He can’t quite bring himself to take prophylactic action to remove a threat to not just himself but his family in A SMALL SACRIFICE. In THE STUFF THAT DREAMS ARE MADE OF he tries to do what he thinks is the right thing and it backfires. THE MAN IN THE WINDOW shows a Forte who’s contracted what one hopes is not a terminal case of Don’t Give a Shit. In A DANGEROUS LESSON (due out May 15 at all finer Amazon outlets everywhere), he’s another step down the road that takes him to his guest appearance in GRIND JOINT, where he’s gone full circle from being the hero of his own series to the psycho sidekick in another.

(Note: Forte’s chronology is complicated. Four novels were completed before his guest appearance in GRIND JOINT. When GRIND JOINT found a publisher, I brought out A SMALL SACRIFICE myself because…well because there was no reason not to and some who had read drafts encouraged me. A DANGEROUS LESSON clears out the Forte backlog, though a few weeks ago I completed a book that takes place after GRIND JOINT. Publishing queries are welcome.)

So would I say evolution of the main character is what keep a series fresh? Not so much. Forte ideas get harder to come by all the time. The next Penns River book (RESURRECTION MALL, due in early 2017 from Down and Out Books) started out as a Forte story. I couldn’t make it work and finally realized is wasn’t a good vehicle for him and belonged in Penns River. He evolves, but it’s difficult to change his circumstances too much and remain true to the series.

Penns River is a different. It’s a fictional depiction of a real place; ideas are coming faster than I can keep up with them. Rare is the week I don’t save something from the local paper to my hard drive that could be a plotline, or at least a scene. I like Detective Ben Dougherty (no relation to Eddie) as a series lead and cops and other characters will come and go, but it’s the town that drives the action. I can see that series running for quite a while.

Walking along a stream with Gustav Mahler, a young Bruno Walter lamented classical music had reached an end of innovation, “Look!” said Mahler, pointing. “There it goes. The last wave.”

Ideas for Forte will pop up from time to time, and I’ll be happy to work on them; I like the character and supporting cast. It’s The River I expect to flow for a long time.

***

Dana King lives in Maryland with The Beloved Spouse. Last month he signed three deals with Down and Out books to re-issue and extend his Penns River series of novels. His first PI novel, A SMALL SACRIFICE, received a Shamus Award nomination in 2013. A short story, "Green Gables," appeared in the anthology BLOOD, GUTS, AND WHISKEY, edited by Todd Robinson. Other short fiction has appeared in Spinetingler, New Mystery Reader, A Twist of Noir, Mysterical-E, and Powder Burn Flash.

Dana’s blog, "One Bite at a Time," resides at danaking.blogspot.com. You may contact him there, or sending an e-mail to DanaKingCrime@gmail.com.

Tuesday, April 26, 2016

For quite a while, I had trouble figuring out what to do with a story I'd completed. The reason for the difficulty? The story's length, an unfortunate 13,000 words. Not that I consider the story's use of language unfortunate, but its length, neither a short story nor a novella. The story is an in-between thing some people call a novelette. A novelette is a perfectly respectable literary term but it's one I never liked. Though it does mean, according to some dictionaries, "a brief novel or long short story", it also means, in other dictionaries, a work that is "typically light and romantic or sentimental in character". This story, called "Summerfield's Film", has humor but it is not especially light, and it is neither romantic nor sentimental.

So I had this thing, this long story, and I felt I'd written it pretty well. I'd spent a good bit of time polishing it and then I sent it to someone I trust, and in this case paid, to look over for more editing. He did almost no editing and expressed strong enthusiasm for it, as did the two friends I showed it to for their feedback. One of these two is a novelist, the other a guy who writes and directs movies, and I have known both for many years. Both are friends who when it comes to giving criticism are honest, constructive, and ruthless, and so when they also weighed in on the story positively, I felt set to put it out somewhere, and excited to do so, except.....what the hell do you do with a 13,000 word story?

Broken River Books, who've done my last two books, publishes mainly short novels but not anything as short as "Summerfield's Film". I thought about adding short stories to it to make a collection, but that would mean writing some new tales to have enough to go with the ones I already have and feel are worthy to publish, and I didn't want to spend months writing stories when I had a novel in progress. Finally, I spoke to a few people about the situation, conveying my frustration about having a story I liked just sitting there in my computer, and each person suggested the same thing. Why not just put the story up myself on Amazon as a solo work, an e-book, and let the chips fall where they may? For some reason, not having gone this route before with any stories, I hadn't ever considered this option, but it made sense. Hire a pro to do a cover, put everything together myself, press a few buttons, and voila! The novelette that's not romantic or sentimental is out in the world.

So what the hell is "Summerfield's Film" about anyhow? Here's what the Amazon description will say:

Now that he's a stay at home father in New York, taking care of the baby while his wife works, Tyler can't get out to the movies often. On one of his rare theater outings, something unexpected happens. He stumbles across the famous director K.M. Summerfield. Once prolific, now a recluse, the filmmaker vanished from public view years ago after he went blind. No one knows where he's been living, and nobody knows what happened to the legendary film he supposedly made just before he lost his sight. It's said he made a horror film, but nobody can be sure.Thrilled about the encounter, Tyler hatches a plan. If he can get his hands on that unseen film, if he can release it to the world, he'll be a hero to film fanatics everywhere. Still, something seems off to Tyler. Is he playing Summerfield as he thinks, or is the once great director, for reasons of his own, playing him?

It's a story I had fun writing. It draws upon the period of years I worked nights and had no other responsibilities and could go to movies in New York City every day of the week if I wanted. There were several revival houses in the city (some still exist) and it's at these places, with their festivals and great programming, that you could see any film from any era from any part of the world - and on the big screen. A whole subculture of cinephiles exists in New York, people who devote the better part of their lives to going to all these revivals and art house showings around the city. These are people who apparently don't work at all, but just go to films. As you might expect, most of these people are on the older side, retired probably, and I would always find it amusing to be at matinees with these fellow film nuts, and I would be the only one in the theater under the age of sixty. "Summerfield's Film" is a story about a guy who used to be part of this world of moviegoing addicts, but now he has settled down with his wife and their baby. That is, until his accidental discovery of the whereabouts of the mysterious director Summerfield brings all his old film obsessiveness back.

Anyway, I'm just glad I found a solution for what to do with a 13,000 word story. Thanks to everyone who offered their suggestions. "Summerfield's Film" will be out on Amazon as an e-book later this week.

Prince will happily talk about how much he adores Adele (“When she just comes on and sings with a piano player, no gimmicks, it’s great”) or Janelle Monáe, but he won’t criticise other artists. “The new pushes the old out of the way and retains what it wants to. Don’t ask me about popular acts. Ask Janelle. Doesn’t matter what I say. We ain’t raining on anyone’s parade. I ain’t mad at anybody. I don’t have any enemies.”

Sunday, April 24, 2016

Over the past decade, I've tossed around the idea of writing about something profound that has affected me as a person and a mother - my dealings with a serial killer.

I fictionalized part of my story in my first book, Blessed are the Dead, but there was more to be said.

As a reporter in the San Francisco Bay Area I spent countless hours interviewing a man who kidnapped and killed kids in the hopes that he would reveal whether one girl he took, Xiana Fairchild, was still alive and where she was.

I would drive each night to the jail and talk to him. We also talked on the phone and exchanged letters.

When they found Xiana's remains, my goal became to get him to tell me details that would mean he would never see the light of day again.

Eventually he was convicted of her murder and confessed to others. The FBI suspects he killed at least ten people.

This winter I joined forces with Xiana's mother - Stephanie Kahalekulu - to write Letters from a Serial Killer. Stephanie, the girl's great aunt, was not Xiana's biological mother. However, as we know, sometimes that doesn't matter. She was more of a mother than many people ever are. Stephanie raised Xiana from her birth in prison to when she was seven years old, shortly before she was kidnapped and killed.

We wanted to share our stories about our dealings with the man in the hopes that it would bring healing to something that still affects us nearly every day.

The greatest gift to me, besides Stephanie trusting me enough to co-write this book (despite dozens of other offers to write about it over the years), is when she told a reporter that now she feels she can finally put this monster out of her life now that she's written this book with me.

After we wrote this book, I didn't sent it to my publisher. I decided to self publish it. For a few reasons. For starters, it didn't fit into what would qualify as a traditional nonfiction true crime book nor a memoir. It is about a third the size of what a publisher would want.

I didn't want to fill the book with more than I was willing to say in order to get a publishing contract. At the same time, because this is such an intensely personal book, I wanted complete and utter control of every aspect of it, from the cover to every single word. I was less interested in what someone else's idea of what would make the book marketable - to me that didn't matter. What mattered was writing this book with Stephanie and finally getting it all out on paper, which has always been my free form of therapy.

To our surprise, the number of pre-orders for this book and the media interest has been impressive. It comes out today and has already been featured on two radio shows, written about in three newspapers, including the San Jose Mercury News, and on one San Francisco TV station. In addition, we've received calls from producers in Los Angeles about featuring us and on our book on true crime TV shows. A little overwhelming.

Here are what some early readers have said:"Heartbreaking and horrifying, Letters From a Serial Killer delves into the thinking of a monstrous murderer - but it also reveals the brave struggles of the women who faced him in order to find justice for his victims. It's a powerfully emotional true account that simply must be read." - Claire Booth, author of true crime book, The False Prophet"An unflinching look at the mind of a notorious Northern California predator who shattered young lives - and invaded the psyche of the reporter who dared to confront him.Together with an anguished victim's mother, Kristi Belcamino fought for answers, at great personal and professional peril. Letters from a Serial Killer is required reading for the armchair criminal profiler. But be forewarned: this book is not for the meek."- Henry K. Lee, author of Presumed Dead: A True-Life Murder Mystery"In this heart-wrenchingly honest, gripping, and at times disturbing look at the inner workings of a missing child case, Kristi Belcamino and Stephanie Kahalekulu pull back the curtain to what it is truly like to go through an experience that changes the lives of all those involved."- Art, Books, & Coffee"I was lucky to read an ARC of this book. I really did not know what to expect when I started reading this, but I was quickly enthralled. I found the prologue emotional and moving. At the end of Chapter 12, something happens which is very powerful and chilling at the same time. Throughout this, I had to keep reminding myself this was not fiction but real! This whole story comes across as raw, truthful and heartbreaking all at the same time. Kristi gives a great account of the life of a crime/police reporter and things I never really thought about. To sum this book up – it is a raw, truthful, emotional, moving account from a loving mother and the relentless crime reporter, both of whom never gave up finding the truth for this little girl." - Sharon Long, reviewer for Mystery Playground
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